D&D 5E (2014) How important is party balance in Next? (iow, how necessary are clerics?)

[Desdichado]

You might genuinely hold this opinion.

I do.

But as a contribution to the discussion, it doesn't add very much that is constructive.

You might genuinely hold this opinion. But as a contribution to the discussion, it doesn't add very much that is... actually a contribution.

Also; see that post in tandem with the other one I just made. Strong-arming someone to play a class, either by actually doing so, or by tacitly and passive-aggressively doing so by making sure that they'll fail (or at least really struggle unreasonably) without doing so is bad GMing. If that is indeed a common meme of D&D, then logically, there are a lot of bad GMs.

 

[Wulfgar76]

It exists because there's a lot of bad GMs.

Maybe. But I think it exists mainly because it's a game which uses hit points to simulate the health of characters, and a certain class who is far better than others at restoring those hit points.

All the "Good GMs" in the world can't change that fact.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Maybe. But I think it exists mainly because it's a game which uses hit points to simulate the health characters, and a certain class who is far better than others at restoring those hit points.

Plus, here's the mathematical fact about hit points: Getting to 0 is bad, but having at least 1 hitpoint is good. There are only three things one can do in battle: Prevent hitpoint damage, cause hitpoint damage, or restore hitpoint damage.

No matter how much you dress up actions you take as "disarming", "grappling", "casting a spell" or whatever, it comes down to the fact that you are doing some combination of damage, prevention of damage, and healing of damage.

This is because hitpoints are a number. The only thing that number can do is go up, down, or stay the same.

Now it makes more sense that a group capable of taking actions that do all 3 things will be more effective than one than can only do 1 or 2 of them unless somehow that group can do those 1 or 2 things so much more effectively than another group that they negate the need for the 3rd.

The cleric is the primary healing class so the game heavily encourages you to have one in order to fill that role. The game isn't designed in such a way that another class can prevent the amount of damage that a cleric can heal.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Some people use "cleric" interchangeably with "healer" in context of these discussions, but I think it's important to point it out for those who may not be doing so.

If you want a traditional game it is nice to have a good healer. Good healers in Next include cleric, druid, and paladin.

Any of those three will fill the healer role. You never need to ask, "Who's going to be the cleric?" The question is, "Who's going to be the cleric or druid or paladin?"

That's three times the options. If no one wants to play any of those classes--well, as has been said, the game still runs okay.

Bards and rangers can heal too, but not as well. And if you really want to go absurdly overboard on the healing play a cleric with the Life domain, but that borders on overkill.

 

[Desdichado]

Maybe. But I think it exists mainly because it's a game which uses hit points to simulate the health of characters, and a certain class who is far better than others at restoring those hit points.

All the "Good GMs" in the world can't change that fact.

No, of course not. But a good GM knows that he can tweak his campaign so that the players don't feel buyer's remorse about not strong-arming someone into playing the cleric. If a GM can't honestly tell the players that it doesn't matter what they pick, they shouldn't concern themselves with "party balance" and to play the characters that they want to play, and they won't be punished in-game for doing so, then that GM is being a passive-aggressive jerk and is, by definition, a bad GM. I'm a strong believer in the notion that there's an inviolate line between the GM's and the player's spheres of responsibility, and players should have all of the freedom to design their characters within the confines that the GM establishes in the description of the setting. This freedom should be both tacit and explicit; i.e., it's one thing to say, "sure pick what you want," but it's another thing to actually make sure that the game will support their choices.

Of course, this is my opinion. Other players I know of feel equally strongly that good GMing means paying no attention to what the party is composed of, and if the party is lacking in the roles or equipment to deal with certain challenges more easily, well it sucks to be them.

Skilled play is still a paradigm that's out there, after all. It is, however, the complete antithesis of any kind of game that I'd find fun. Hence my labeling of GM's who run that way as "bad GMs."

 

[Wulfgar76]

No, of course not. SNIP

I agree. I've always encouraged players to play whatever they wanted within the theme of the campaign. It is indeed bad DMing to shoehorn a cleric into the party 'or else'.

Yet, I dont believe the role of the Cleric is overly inflated in D&D Next. If I were to place the D&D Next cleric within the context of Clerics from all editions, I'd say his relative impact on the game is greater than AD&D, but not nearly as inflated as 3e and 4e Clerics.

The indestructible cleric was a mainstay of 3e and 4e. Good riddance I say.

 

[Incenjucar]

Clerics (and even leaders in general) were strictly optional in 4E. A party with a balance of roles is usually going to do better than imbalanced ones, but they're not nearly as party-defining as in previous editions unless you did a lot of inter-player optimization.

 

[howandwhy99]

This is how I see it. Lawful clerics are growth-oriented. Their focus is to improve the community. The evil priests of D&D are decay-oriented. Acting against them means being weakened and demoralized. Neither is necessary to play the game as a group. Combats are balanced according to combat ability, so a party is balanced as a group of fighters regardless of class. Fighters excel at combat. Magic users are better at magic use, but magic is balanced according to all people in the world not just those who focus on it. Same with sneaking around, uncovering treasure, getting through locks and barricades, and so on.

D&D Next was balancing the classes still largely as combatants. Not having one class and having another wasn't an issue. There were strengths and weaknesses to each, but you might see it as not having the 2-handed weapon class when everyone was playing sword and board or ranged attackers.

There was some movement to different types of game challenges being more or less class specific, but all the classes should be competent enough in all regards that players self-balancing by gauging challenges won't be as necessary during DM prep.

 

[Desdichado]

Yet, I dont believe the role of the Cleric is overly inflated in D&D Next. If I were to place the D&D Next cleric within the context of Clerics from all editions, I'd say his relative impact on the game is greater than AD&D, but not nearly as inflated as 3e and 4e Clerics.

I wonder sometimes if the 3e cleric was a victim of its own hype, so to speak. Because the discussion on game balance decisions made about the system was made very public, a lot of the assumptions that were used as the baseline for game balance (i.e., the four-member traditional adventuring group, with a scouting/trapfinding optimized rogue, a heavy-armor wearing fighter/tank, a magic-missile and fireball slinging wizard, and a healing and buff-dealing cleric) I think a lot of people fell victim to confirmation bias.

Either that or so many encounters were designed specifically with those assumptions in mind that it led to confirmation bias of another kind--because encounters were designed with the four-roles in mind, lack of the four roles led to more failure.

In AD&D (or BD&D or OD&D, or whatever), all of those assumptions were much more subtle, and therefore parties that didn't necessarily have them could muddle through. A good GM who managed to "tweak" the experience slightly to account for what the party was missing, could make sure that the party had a good time and were successful. Unless, of course, they played in the "skilled play" mindset, in which case, the four role party was already fairly well established. But outside of the skilled play mindset, I don't think many gamers necessarily gave this notion nearly as much thought.

With the assumptions more "nakedly visible", so to speak, a lot of that intuitive tweaking was simply not done, I think. It was just assumed that you needed to match the design assumptions to be successful. And if you struggled but didn't meet the assumptions, well, hey... of course not! You don't have a cleric! (or whatever.)

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I love the idea of playing short campaigns based on focused parties that completely lack certain traditional roles. A party of nothing but rogues, or wizards, or fighters. Great fun. The idea really first occurred to me with the 2e "Complete X Handbook" series.

I love being required to play such a game in full realization that you lack standard assumed resources and skills and have to play around it. The way I play, it should feel very different and present very different challenges to be in a focused rather than balanced party.

Interestingly for the current topic, an all cleric party is the most versatile and suffers the least from being a focused party.